Movie notes: R for ridiculous?

(Note: The “R” rating proves once again that it is impossible for a film to be rated NC-17 on violence alone.)

This statement was added as a postscript to Roger Ebert’s review of “Shuttle,” a low-budget, limited-release, torture-porn flick that is unlikely to ever make it to San Antonio. But it dovetails nicely with a point I wanted to make last week and never quite got around to it.

What do these next two films have in common?

“Watchmen” is a graphic treatment of a series of graphic novels about a collection of superheroes whose behavior is less than super. I haven’t seen it, but the reviews and commentary mention everything from a rape scene to brain-splattering violence. The movie watchdog screenit.com red-flags maybe a couple hundred scenes and gives it “extreme” ratings for gore, violence, sex and profanity.

“Once” is a delightful film set in Dublin about an Irish street musician and a Czech flower girl who develop a musical and romantic connection. It’s actually a stealth musical, in that it has lots of songs played in their entirety, but it doesn’t play like “Chicago” or “The Sound of Music.” It has no sex or violence. I’ve seen it twice, and I’m racking my brain to think of any objectionable material, other than a couple of F-bombs that flow from normal conversation and are actually hilarious.

So what’s the connection? They’re both rated R.

I made this point about the ridiculousness of a life-affirming movie like “Once” getting an R rating when the movie came out. But last week’s commentary from Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips regarding ‘Watchmen” brought it all back. Here’s the key passage:

The ratings priorities in this country, skewing toward brainless leniency for violence and puritanical nervousness for nudity and language, continue to this day … The notion of “Once” being confined to the same ratings classification as “Watchmen” boggles the mind.”